India and Canada expelled their top diplomats this week, thus escalating the row between them over the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar (which happened in June 2023), a Sikh separatist leader in Canada. This is a historic low in an otherwise low-key and friendly relationship.
The expulsions arose from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s claim that the Canadian police were now investigating allegations that Indian agents, and possibly Indian government officials, had a hand in the killing and other violent activities in which even members of the Bishnoi gang were involved.
The Canadian police accused Indian agents of “homicides, extortion and violent acts” targeting pro-Khalistan supporters. The police chief said there were links between “agents of the government of India to homicides and violent acts,” adding that they had “leveraged their official position to engage in clandestine activities.”
Canada’s allegations come at a time when Trudeau is battling anti-incumbency at home and elections are just about a year away. He is not doing too well in the polls, and many have ascribed his unusual decision to publicly speak of the case last year as an effort to curry favour with the 7,70,000-strong Sikh community.
Indeed, Trudeau’s Liberal Party is a minority government, propped up by the New Democratic Party of Jagmeet Singh, whose sympathies for the Khalistani movement are well known.
India has for quite some time urged the Canadian government to deal with pro-Khalistan elements in the country. It has never really forgiven Canada for the lapses in the investigation of the Air India IC 182 bombing which was masterminded by a clique of Khalistani supporters in Canada in June 1985, killing 329 persons, mostly Indo-Canadians.
The Canadian government has taken the view that dissent is the essence of Canadian democracy. However, many of those, including Nijjar, have been wanted men in India.
India and Canada have a lot of equities in each other. Canada hosts one of the largest Indian-origin diaspora communities in the world (1.3 million people), four percent of its population. It is also its 10th largest trading partner in 2022 and it has been Canada’s top source of foreign students since 2018. They are significant investors in each other’s economies, and here, Canada’s pension fund investments of C$11.9 billion in the 2019-23 period stand out.
The US for its part has called on India to take the matter at hand seriously. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that the US wanted the Government of India to cooperate with Canada on the investigation but “obviously they haven’t. They have chosen an alternative path.”
The US has alleged a similar but unsuccessful plot against an American-Sikh Gurpatwant Singh Pannun but handled the matter quietly at an official level where both sides are now cooperating, and an Indian Enquiry Committee has visited Washington recently in connection with the case.
However, the case against two Indian nationals is unfolding in New York and on Friday, the US issued an indictment on Vikash Yadav, a R&AW official. In another twist, Yadav, who was no longer in government service, had been reportedly arrested last December in an extortion case in New Delhi and let off on bail in April this year.
Trudeau's Mistake
So why couldn’t the Canadian issue have been handled in a way similar to that of the US at an official level? Mainly because of the manner in which Trudeau handled the issue.
Trudeau had met Prime Minister Modi at the sidelines of the G20 summit last year and reportedly raised the issue. The Indian side was furious and expressed “strong concerns about continuing anti-Indian activities of extremist elements in Canada.”
On his return, Trudeau made the mistake of publicising the issue by making a statement on the floor of the Canadian Parliament, noting “credible allegations” of a “potential” Indian government link to the assassination. This, he now says, was not based on any evidence but intelligence information shared by the Five Eyes agencies of the Anglosphere.
India “completely rejected” the allegations terming them “absurd”. Both then expelled each other’s diplomats.
But let us be clear: as of now, the story has only reached the halfway point. What lies ahead is a criminal trial of the four Indian nationals arrested by the Canadian police in May this year. They have been charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the case of Nijjar's killing.
As in India, the evidence they have gathered will only be presented at the trial. This is a different process from the US, where an indictment laying out the evidence and the charges is often placed at the outset of the trial.
According to reports, the defence counsels have received some 10,000 pages of disclosure from the police and expect a similar volume of evidence in the coming period. For this reason, the trial has been adjourned five times in the last four months and it is now scheduled to be taken up on 21 November.
It is important for India to separate the allegations and remarks of Trudeau from those of the Canadian police which acts independently of its political masters. The trial could come up with embarrassing revelations.
What Now?
It is unlikely that Canada will field evidence gathered through intelligence sources like telephone intercepts or even the possible bugging of the Indian High Commission to implicate Indian diplomats. It is doubtful if such evidence will be acceptable to the court.
The evidence will focus on the arrested persons, based on their surveillance and identification for the past year, and their role in the plots as drivers, shooters and spotters. Interrogations may have revealed evidence of conspiracy and details of a larger network.
Links to the High Commission or our intelligence agencies might surface as they have in the case of the United States. In the latter, the Indian government seems to have cut loose the alleged Indian agent Vikash Yadav. Whether he is extradited to the US to face the charges or not remains to be seen.
New Delhi has also reached out to the US officialdom to contain the damage. Will they do the same in Canada if some negative link surfaces?
Given the torrent of angry words and charges that have been hurled and the deep rift between India and Canada, this may not be easy. It is also unlikely that there can be a turnaround in India-Canada ties as long as Trudeau heads the government in Canada. Elections are a year away and there is every chance that he will be shown the door by the electorate.
Hopes for a diplomatic turnaround, which requires a degree of backtracking by both sides, will depend on the next government, which could take office only by the end of 2025.
That said, there is also a need to see that the extra-territorial elimination of terrorists is not something extraordinary. The primary job of any government is to protect national security and they go to great lengths to ensure this. The problem with terrorism is that there is often no common agreement on who is a terrorist and who is not.
But that has not stopped the US, Israel or Russia, for example, from dealing with those who threaten them abroad. India has suffered long from the terrorist menace and it is in the process of drawing its red lines, literally.
The arrest of Vikash Yadav shows that India perhaps needs to introspect as to how such elements manage to get recruited in intelligence services and the tactics that New Delhi is adopting to fight the threat in third countries.
(The writer is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. This is an opinion article and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)
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